Thursday, February 2, 2012

Globalism Comes Home

Globalism's next stage could actually be good for America and the world

Like the proverbial blind squirrel, every once in awhile ChiCom fanboy Thomas Friedman rises above his simplistic pseudointellectualism and mixed metaphors to produce a column that makes sense.

His latest outing is full of CEO quotes about how the global economy continues to evolve, and how America is uniquely poised to take full advantage of it.

The Global Elites are losing their Grip

Continual fragmentation of ideas, manufacturing, and tastes, along with markets fracturing into micro-markets and specialty niches all conspire to make it harder for the global elites to homogenize every last aspect of our lives.

Fellow New York Times columnist, David Ignatius, a liberal who passes for a conservative over there, notes that the Davos Men are more disconnected than ever from us normal people, but he is instead pessimistic. I discount his gloominess because he himself is disconnected, a man in awe of the world elites.

Ignatius is cheered only because the ranks of the elites now include the red and yellow, brown and black, slowly wrenching global thought leadership from the Western White Man's oligopolistic grip. Reading it makes me long for times past when reporters hated the rich and powerful.

What you see here are some of the smartest business and political leaders in the world gathering to discuss common problems. It's a heady feeling, to see so much global talent in one place.

It's an inclusive elitism: The magnet draws the rising tycoons from developing countries and fuses them with the once-dominant Americans, British, Germans and French. That's the most likable feature of the forum, the way you see Chinese and Indians and Egyptians and Pakistanis shuffling down the streets in their snow boots, along with the Swiss hosts. They are part of the connected world, just as much as the old-line bankers and CEOs from the West. (David Ignatius)

What Ignatius fails to realize is that the global geniuses may have outsize influence, but its the ingenuity of the locals that powers an economy, and we have plenty right here in the good ol' US of A.

Ignatius rightly laments the societal destruction globalism has wrought, but he's singing yesterday's tune. Friedman has the forward-looking view on this one...

Many C.E.O.’s, though, increasingly see the world as a place where their products can be made anywhere through global supply chains (often assembled with nonunion-protected labor) and sold everywhere.

These C.E.O.’s rarely talk about “outsourcing” these days. Their world is now so integrated that there is no “out” and no “in” anymore. In their businesses, every product and many services now are imagined, designed, marketed and built through global supply chains that seek to access the best quality talent at the lowest cost, wherever it exists. (Friedman)

Mike Splinter, the C.E.O. of Applied Materials, has put it to me this way: “Outsourcing was 10 years ago, where you’d say, ‘Let’s send some software generation overseas.’ This is not the outsourcing we’re doing today. This is just where I am going to get something done. Now you say, ‘Hey, half my Ph.D.’s in my R-and-D department would rather live in Singapore, Taiwan or China because their hometown is there and they can go there and still work for my company.’ This is the next evolution.” He has many more choices.

Just like Toyota and other foreign firms manufacture products here for our consumption. That is the future. Less import-export of final products, and more build and sell in place when it makes economic sense.

America can thrive in this world, explained Yossi Sheffi, the M.I.T. logistics expert, if it empowers “as many of our workers as possible to participate” in different links of these global supply chains — either imagining products, designing products, marketing products, orchestrating the supply chain for products, manufacturing high-end products and retailing products. If we get our share, we’ll do fine.

The world is on the cusp of an information age equivalent of the Industrial Revolution, and America above all others is best positioned to take full advantage of this decentralize future.

Few deny that technology fuels economic growth as well as both social and lifestyle progress, the latter largely seen in health and environmental metrics. But consider three features that most define America, and that are essential for unleashing the promises of technological change: our youthful demographics, dynamic culture and diverse educational system. (The Coming Tech-Led Boom)

We don't need no stinking national strategies

As usual with the rare Friedman column I agree with, he closes with a conclusion so absurd that I end up wanting to tear my eyes out in frustration...

"If only — if only — we could come together on a national strategy to enhance and expand all of our natural advantages..." (Friedman)

Poor Progressive Tommy, always longing for the Strong Man to make the trains run on time...

National Strategy? How about a low tax, low regulation environment where you can manufacture things again in this country without 200 government bureaucracies crawling up your ass? That's the strategy we need.

Restore the Rule of Law and give the American workers and entrepreneurs a stable, predictable environment to invent, create and be free, and they will lead this nation again to the sunlit uplands of economic greatness and personal liberty. Personal liberty and economic freedom: You can't have one without the other.

43 comments:

"the whole notion of exports is disappearing"..man, talk about a true example of globalism.As for your last 3 paragraphs; would that Friedman's side of the aisle could even begin to understand and honor that. We'd be a lot better off.

Silver, compared to our international peers, we already have a very low tax and regulatory environment. You can't get much lower. We just tried lowering taxes and reducing regulations and it got us nowhere - in fact, it left us in a hole. Our economy thrived when we have more taxes and regulation! Where the hell have you been your whole friggin' life???

Friedman is right. If we want to thrive again, we need to bolster our natural advantages, and I would add to that that we have to stop cannibalizing ourselves. Our energy, communication, education, police, war, and healthcare policies are draining us like giant leeches.

We have among the world's most productive people right here in the USA. We can compete with anyone. But unlike our peers, we have no national healthcare, extremely expensive education, wasteful and counter-productive war and police states, and no national power and communications grid.

We are holding ourselves back by profiteering from things we should be encouraging. It is the moron who rigidly, dogmatically, almost religiously believes the private sector can do literally everything - that is holding us back. Stop being a moron.

You are right. Federal intervention has totally botched these areas of our private lives. Government is an army of giant leeches. Glad you see that.

We have the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world that is ameliorated only by the swiss cheese of exemptions the rich and powerful purchase for themselves.

The regulatory environment is really what is killing us, along with the capricious bureaucracy and Jefe Maximo Obama raiding guitar factories because the owners don't give generously enough to his campaign coffers.

When you finished your reply to me with "More government? You must be crazy..."

That is such a silly, parochial argument. Can't we talk about effective, efficient government? Why does it always have to be "big or small" with you guys? I'm sorry, but it's so arbitrary and pointless.

You are right. Federal intervention has totally botched these areas of our private lives. Government is an army of giant leeches. Glad you see that."

No, government is the vein on which the leeches are feeding.

What don't you understand about that?

"We have the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world that is ameliorated only by the swiss cheese of exemptions the rich and powerful purchase for themselves."

Blah, blah, blah. We also have the lowest top marginal personal income rates, so what are you saying? That the corporate tax is nothing but a scheme to offset taxes on consumers without having an outright sales or even a VAT tax, let a lone higher top income tax rates? Nooooo... You wouldn't be saying that, would you?

"The regulatory environment is really what is killing us,..."

Blah, blah, blah. Name a regulation you don't like. Then picture yourself at the bad end of that repeal. Do you feel smart now? NAME ALL THESE TERRIBLE REGULATIONS YOU SPEAK OF.

"...along with the capricious bureaucracy and Jefe Maximo Obama raiding guitar factories because the owners don't give generously enough to his campaign coffers."

Do you know anything about that story? Ever hear of Teddy Roosevelt? He's the President that signed that law. Here's a perfect example of "big" government, as you call it, doing something the American people want done - conserving the natural world. You don't know anything about that story, do you?

Read the constitution Jersey. Your federal government is in gross violation to the point our lives are literally not our own. If you are a company that does not pay money to both parties, you are toast. Ask Bill Gates.

National Strategy? How about a low tax, low regulation environment where you can manufacture things again in this country without 200 government bureaucracies crawling up your ass? That's the strategy we need.

Regulations, particularly those that squash manufacturing, are the undoing of our economic system.

These regulations have crept up on us -- sometimes driven by crisis management (oil spills, for example).

Jersey said: "No, government is the vein on which the leeches are feeding. What don't you understand about that?"

The worst leeches by far are those in government.

"Name a regulation you don't like. Then picture yourself at the bad end of that repeal. Do you feel smart now? NAME ALL THESE TERRIBLE REGULATIONS YOU SPEAK OF."

OK, lets name some.

How about the regulations so many states have that bar insurance companies from offering services over state borders? Get rid of this. Restore competition to health care. Who is at the "Bad end" of this repeal? Insurance companies that do a lousy job at serving the public but get away with it because competition is outlawed.

Or the regulation which forces workers in many states to join unions whether or not it is in their interest? Get rid of it. Restore power to working people.

Who is at the "bad end" of this repeal? Union thus who get rich from stolen funds. Tough for them.

Jersey is living proof -- IF we can believe what he says, which always seems dubious -- that some unfortunate beings' only capacity for sensual pleasure resides in their rectal cavity.

There would be no life at all for people of this sort if it weren't for their odd craving to experience a perpetual pain-in-the-ass.

It reminds me of the hoary old joke that made the rounds after Prince Philip, the Greek, married then-Princess Elizabeth:

On the eve of the Royal Wedding the Queen Mother took her daughter aside, and earnestly entreated the young princess not to accede to any request her future bridegroom might make for her to turn over in bed. "These Greeks, my dear, have a very unsavory reputation in matters of that sort, you know," said the mother.

The wedding, as all the world knows, went off splendidly, but the couple did not live happily ever after. Poor Elizabeth was so earnest and determined in taking her mother's advice that after a year of strained conjugal relations Prince Philip finally asked Elizabeth why she so adamantly refused to change her position in bed.

Does anyone here know how many penises are in in Dali's Enigma? Why don't you tell everyone, beamish? According to you, there are at LEAST thirty... but let me warn others. If you're NOT as obsessed with penises as beamish is, you might not count THAT many.

I think it's pretty obvious that beamish and I are NOT quite through making the Republican Party safe for Mitt Romney, FreeThinke. Else we wouldn't be here commenting and talking up Newt, our RNC establishment's secret anti-Tea / anti-Ron Paul stalking horse.

Ah yes. My support for Newt Gingrich is really a secret Zionist plot to get Mitt Romney the nomination and you nailed us when we did MKULTRA mind control experiments on Ron Paul to make him disavow the racist smut he's unknowingly published over the last 30 years. Pretty soon, Ron Paul will have to take up sock puppetry to get away from himself as well. LOL

No no, guys, seriously, don't point and laugh at the desperately flailing homosexual stalker. It only makes him more angry and docile.

Hey, making the RNC safe for white people and males is what we do. Knocking all those disgusting minority "Tea Party" riff-raff candidates out of the contest wasn't exactly rocket science. All we had to do was pretend to be angrier at the Republican establishment (ourselves) than THEY were. And who could possibly serve as THAT vessel for anger better than Newt? All we had to do is get Sheldon & Miriam to kick in a $10 million side bet (and pay off a few ho's).

Mitt Romney is now Ronald Reagan's designated heir to the conservative movement. Isn't life wonderful, beamish? Hey beamish, lets go attack some more Paulites. he RNC won't be completely safe until we get rid of all those crazy Constitutionalists and Libertarians.

I'm sorry the Republican primaries are still one person - one vote. Why don't you make the most of your Ron Paul sock puppetry in a Democrat primary in 2016? I mean, they're all convinced Ron Paul is a Constitutionalist and Libertarian, something Ron Paul can't even pull off in the Libertarian Party these days.

The Founding Fathers and those who fought in the Continental Army were our original Western Heroes, guided by the thinkers of the Enlightenment and following in the footsteps of great warriors like Jan Sobieski and Charles Martel.